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General discussionWhy are so many old games Windows-only?(26 posts)(26 posts)
(26 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 09, 2021
I was looking at old DOS Sierra games in particular, but it seems like a lot of old DOS games that should work fine in DOSBox on Mac and Linux are listed as Windows-only. Does anyone know why this is the case, or if it's likely to change down the road?

I'm a Mac user that would love to dive into some of the old classics.
Posted April 09, 2021
If you mean what GOG shows as supported, that's basically what they guarantee support for and offer technical support with. Many games not listed as playing on X do play on X.
Posted April 09, 2021
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kdgarris: I was looking at old DOS Sierra games in particular, but it seems like a lot of old DOS games that should work fine in DOSBox on Mac and Linux are listed as Windows-only. Does anyone know why this is the case, or if it's likely to change down the road?

I'm a Mac user that would love to dive into some of the old classics.
Some DOSBox games which could have been installed for MacOS and Linux are not setup for this, but it's possible at least for x32 systems. I remember something about Apple revoking x32 support and we still have not x64 DOSBox so only Windows users have the most DOS games ready to play.
Posted April 09, 2021
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kdgarris: Does anyone know why this is the case, or if it's likely to change down the road?
Licensing granted by publishers. And most likely not. But you can very well take those DOSBoxed games packaged for Windows and run them on a Linux (or Mac, I assume) DOSBox. I certainly am doing that with quite a few.
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Cadaver747: have not x64 DOSBox so only Windows users have the most DOS games ready to play.
file /usr/bin/dosbox
/usr/bin/dosbox: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=f8413bc3df39cf65542ecdc0f5989ae99c09b17b, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped

Not sure about Mac, but there's definitely a x64 version for Linux.
Post edited April 09, 2021 by WinterSnowfall
Posted April 09, 2021
low rated
probably because nearly everyone plays on win and only <2% plays on linux
most of the time it is just not profitable to support other os than win10
Posted April 09, 2021
Licensing and ???, basically. Distribution rights are often a fickle thing; though it doesn't actually stop anyone from taking the EXE and running it in a native DOSbox.

Otherwise, it's just tinfoil time.
Posted April 10, 2021
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kdgarris: I was looking at old DOS Sierra games in particular, but it seems like a lot of old DOS games that should work fine in DOSBox on Mac and Linux are listed as Windows-only. Does anyone know why this is the case, or if it's likely to change down the road?

I'm a Mac user that would love to dive into some of the old classics.
Didn’t Mac drop 32bit support completely? THey never have been ones for being an open supporting platform so I am not suprised, what suprises me is that there is any support for macs. Linux, meh, a minor market share, nothing wrong with it, and if devs want to support it, all well and good, but it’s still a minor market share and whilst steams Linux project expanded it some way it really hasn’t taken off like predicted. Maybe another 5 or 10 years things will change, I doubt it though. Win 10 is solid, bang up to date, and the platform of choice for most big devs, so not using it is going to be sub par for the foreseeable future.
Posted April 10, 2021
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Cadaver747: I remember something about Apple revoking x32 support and we still have not x64 DOSBox so only Windows users have the most DOS games ready to play.
Not only have we had x64 DOSBox for quite some time (years), but there's a M1 build now. GOG uses the x64 DOSBox for Mac DOS games; that's why they're listed as Mac-compatible (e.g. Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet, many others).
Posted April 10, 2021
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Cadaver747: I remember something about Apple revoking x32 support and we still have not x64 DOSBox so only Windows users have the most DOS games ready to play.
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eric5h5: Not only have we had x64 DOSBox for quite some time (years), but there's a M1 build now. GOG uses the x64 DOSBox for Mac DOS games; that's why they're listed as Mac-compatible (e.g. Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet, many others).
I meant officially endorsed DOSBox, not forks. Give the link and prove me wrong. GOG support only vanilla DOSBox
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Posted April 10, 2021
I remember some indie dev mentioning how Mac and Linux versions made up a majority of the tech support issues but only a tiny fraction of the sales. They figured supporting anything other than Windows was more trouble than it was worth.
Post edited April 10, 2021 by Sheershaw
Posted April 10, 2021
Edited
Post edited April 10, 2021 by toupz111
Posted April 10, 2021
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Cadaver747: I meant officially endorsed DOSBox, not forks. Give the link and prove me wrong. GOG support only vanilla DOSBox
GOG doesn't support only that, since previously they used a customized version of Boxer for the Mac rather than vanilla DOSBox. Now they use 64-bit DOSBox, which is unfortunate since Boxer also has a 64-bit version now and is much nicer than plain DOSBox. The proof is that they list a bunch of Mac DOS games on their website, which they would not do if they were using 32-bit DOSBox, since they no longer list 32-bit Mac games as compatible even if they still exist. (e.g., Magic Carpet 2 isn't listed as Mac-compatible even though there's a Mac version, since they haven't got around to updating it and it's still using 32-bit Boxer.) You can download the Mac version of any DOS games you may have and see for yourself.
Posted April 10, 2021
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Sheershaw: I remember some indie dev mentioning how Mac and Linux versions made up a majority of the tech support issues but only a tiny fraction of the sales. They figured supporting anything other than Windows was more trouble than it was worth.
Yea, pretty sure it must be quite a luxury item for indie devs, would be curious to see some numbers on that. For Steam we know that the average indie game makes $16000 in sales so I would not be too surprised if it was 1/5 - 1/10 here... considering how few people really game on Linux/Mac exclusively I would be surprised if they even made up 10% of those sales.

In short, if you spend a day on support for Linux/Mac users of your indie game, you probably chewed through the entire profit that comes from doing so in the lifetime of your product on GOG...
Posted April 10, 2021
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eric5h5: GOG doesn't support only that, since previously they used a customized version of Boxer for the Mac rather than vanilla DOSBox. Now they use 64-bit DOSBox, which is unfortunate since Boxer also has a 64-bit version now and is much nicer than plain DOSBox. The proof is that they list a bunch of Mac DOS games on their website, which they would not do if they were using 32-bit DOSBox, since they no longer list 32-bit Mac games as compatible even if they still exist. (e.g., Magic Carpet 2 isn't listed as Mac-compatible even though there's a Mac version, since they haven't got around to updating it and it's still using 32-bit Boxer.) You can download the Mac version of any DOS games you may have and see for yourself.
My bad, I did not know about Mac OS 64-bit DOSBox. Windows stands for 32-bit.
Posted April 10, 2021
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Darvond: Licensing and ???, basically. Distribution rights are often a fickle thing; though it doesn't actually stop anyone from taking the EXE and running it in a native DOSbox.

Otherwise, it's just tinfoil time.
They hated him because he told the truth.

If you look at Steam stats, 96.17% use Windows, 2.98% use Mac, and a 0.85% use Linux. In many cases porting to Linux simply isn't profitable.
Post edited April 10, 2021 by Crosmando
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General discussionWhy are so many old games Windows-only?(26 posts)(26 posts)
(26 posts)